The premise of the position that you invoked is hardly beside the point.

"Marriage is honorable, and the marriage bed undefiled.
For on both Christ bestowed his blessing,
Present incarnate and eating at the wedding in Cana".

--St. Andrew of Crete, The Great Canon

This is why I hoped to avoid contraception as an example. As I said earlier, participants are engaged in creating a fake version of the Roman position in order to make it easy to knock down. This is not any apparent search for truth as much as a search for self-justification. It's a pity.

If we're making up a fake version of the Latin position, it was a fake position used by no less that Archbishop Josef Raya, who wrote on contraception in his book, Crowning, the Christian Marriage:

Either I am communicating horribly, or you are reading carelessly. I'm sure I'm not saying anything beyond your capacity to grasp. I'm not sure I could.

When did I dispute the history or the current state of rebellion against this teaching?

I have only complained against obvious distortions of the Catholic position, and obvious distortions of the origin of the Catholic position.

To you, I attribute the latter. It seems that your position is that the prohibition of contraception arises from "the long discredited doctrine of a fourth century African bishop", as if this prohibition had no place for centuries in Eastern Christianity or in, for instance, Judaism.

I'll grant you that the East and Judaism have loosened their practical prohibitions into practical permission of late, along with the protestants and others.

I will say that this is proof that the Catholic Church is protected from error. You will say it is proof that the rest have moved beyond silly primitive ideas. Or you will say, "but there never was a prohibition in the East". Of course in a tradition which avoids prohibitions generally, this is evidence of nothing.

The point will stand that despite the complaints of a few modern Roman Catholics and practically everyone else living today and very recently, the very great majority of Christians have known that contraception is perverse. If we are taking polls, you lose.

The only way you win such a poll is to discount, as you have, the opinions of the past. This, of course, resembles the discussion on the capital punishment thread, where people are arguing that these crazy old ideas needed modern thought to set them straight.

So much for Christianity at all.

Anyway, in the end, it hasn't much to do with the point I was trying to make before sparking this: that there are differences between the East and West which are not mere differences of perspective. To ignore this is irrational, and if instead one will go in every case to the position that Rome is wrong and Orthodoxy is right, it seems very strange indeed that anyone would cling to this odd idea of communion with the heterodox over the orthodox. It's all a little self-defeating.

It's evidence that Eastern Catholics have a different tradition on this and many other topics than their Roman brothers and sisters, which I believe is what we are saying. That tradition does not evaporate when we enter into communion with each other.



A poll of the current Roman Catholic laity says the opposite of what you assert. There is a large disconnect within the West, to say nothing of the East.



If there are any instances of Orthodox (Catholic or otherwise) telling the Roman Church that it must permit contraception, I'm yet to see it (that comes from within). This thread is about Eastern Christians being told they are wrong by Rome.

I'm okay with the differences in doctrine between our churches. Are you?

You mean the "Latin Catholic" position, based on Latin Catholic assumptions about human sexuality and original sin.



For most of human history, contraception was either (a) abortifactant; or (b) closely associated with magic and sorcery. Given those parameters, a universal loathing of the practice was and remains understandable; the Orthodox Church, for instance, still prohibits methods of contraception that induce abortion.

A more fundamental issue, which you have failed to address, is the original stratum of the Christian tradition regarding sex, which said that any attempt to regulate either the number or timing of children within marriage is wrong. It did not matter whether the methods used were "natural" or "artificial" (itself an artificial distinction); husband and wife should do nothing deliberate to avoid having children (and doing nothing, when it involves monitoring of ovulation, is actually doing something).

The rationale of the Eastern and Western Churches differed as to why this is the case. In the West, all sex was seen as inherently sinful; only procreation within marriage "excused" sex, so any attempt to avoid procreation was sinful. The East, in contrast, did not view sex within marriage as sinful (see citations from both Chrysostom and Andrew of Crete), and did not see procreation either as the purpose of marriage or as an excuse for sex within marriage; it did see the begetting of children as a blessing and as the seal of the Mystery of Marriage, in which husband and wife assume their roles as co-creators with God.

Just as the rationales varied, so, too, did the approaches. Humanae vitae takes a rather legalistic view of the matter, and lays down rigid guidelines. It does not really have any pastoral component at all.

Now, an authentic, Eastern Christian approach would, as a matter of principle, uphold the fullness of the Tradition: i.e., any attempt to regulate the number of children or the spacing of children, is falling short of God's intention. It does not matter whether you use a condom or abstain from sex while the wife is ovulating, both fall short of the mark.

Recognizing that not all persons are at the same point of spiritual development, the Eastern Christian approach would, while upholding the ideal, also take into account human weakness. For those who feel, after prayerful discernment, that they need to regulate the number or the spacing of their children, the Church would encourage the use of so-called natural methods (recognizing that this in itself falls short of perfection). And for those for whom, because of physical or spiritual factors, such methods are either impractical or inappropriate, the Church would also allow the use of non-abortifactant "artificial" means.

An Eastern Christian approach would pay more attention to intentions rather than methods. It would condemn any couple who chose not to have any children within marriage, or who limited the number of children not because of legitimate concerns regarding the ability to provide for them, but merely to enjoy an unfettered and materially affluent lifestyle.

And it would, at all times, encourage and promote spiritual growth, as it does in all aspects of human existence. We are all ascending the ladder, and those on the lower rungs need to be helped upward. Those who are using artificial methods can and should be helped to transition to natural methods; those using natural methods should be encouraged simply to be open to conception at all times, so as to truly live in accordance with the ideal.

But, as Sayedna Joseph wrote, the Church cannot compel, and it cannot infringe upon the freedom of the husband and wife whom the Church itself has given crowns of kingship, priesthood and martyrdom through the mystery of marriage. The legalistic view of the Latin Church simply says, "These methods are sinful, and those methods are not", and offers no real pastoral approach that addresses the real concerns and problems of the real men and women who have to face their consequences.

Under such conditions, no wonder the teaching of the Latin Church is largely ignored within its own ranks (and has been, since long before the pill; if you don't believe this, I can provide you with data both on fertility rates and common practices from the Middle Ages down through the 19th century). And, as always, promulgating a rule that cannot be enforced, and which people widely ignore, merely undermines the authority and integrity of any institution, whether temporal or spiritual.

It is not so much that the Eastern and Western Churches have different positions on contraception, as it is that they have different views and approaches to marriage, sex, sin, and the pastoral care of the faithful. The oikonomia of the East provides the degree of flexibility lacking in the West to loosen or even waive the rule, when its strict enforcement would do more spiritual harm than good.

The Latin Church talks about the necessity of viewing the individual as a person, rather than as an object; but its tendency to fall back on legalism has just the opposite effect--the Latin Church does not see the individual sinner as a person with specific spiritual needs, but as an abstraction. It will absolve him of his sin, but it won't help him address the problem that causes the sin.

I still love our one and only Patriarch. When Eastern Catholicism as we know it ceases to exist as we know it we will still be Orthodox in Communion with Rome and Eastern Catholics. The bishop of Rome will still be our highest Patriarch and I will still honor him. The rest are minor details not worth the fight.

Sorry, but that interjection is just weird. I know that the original topic had to do with what one should/can accept from the Pope, but it has taken a natural turn into the realm of a.b.c., and I for one am interested in the debate.

CDL, in addition to the complex senselessness of what you are saying, it reads as defensive and somewhat childish.

So, basically, you're a true Papist: the Church is the Papacy and the Papacy is the Church, and nothing else matters much.

Until we decide to break communion I am.

To bad the Pope disagrees with your true Papist view. The Church is not the Papacy, and the Papacy is not the Church.

Carson (if I may): that is just bizarre. I have read in other posts that you are an Eastern and not a Roman Catholic. How does 'being in communion' come to mean the wholesale acceptance of Roman thought?

If we consider the churches of the first eight centuries and the different perspectives on the person and work of Christ that they brought with them to the councils from 431 on, there would have been no Chalcedonian synthesis or any other subsequent orthodox definition had they simply capitulated to the Roman tradition.

Indeed, though arguable, it might even be said that had communion meant capitulation, the Christ we worship today might have been misrepresented as having only one will.

I find your ecclesiology simply incomprehensible.

I have noticed that a lot of ex-Protestants find the notion of one man calling all the shots comforting. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Or, to quote Patriarch Maximos V (in a very different context): "They go from one extreme to the other".

Fellas,

I look at this discussion as it has developed and I see a Freshman bull session. Make of my comments what you wish. As long as you consider your rules to be no rules at all and one can make them up as one goes along I'm really not interested in your ecclesiastical observations. Nor am I interested in your remarks about whether or not my ex Protestantism means what you think it means.

I've learned what I wanted to learn about the posters on this subject so I leave it to you.

CDL